Pursuing Love

Yesterday, I sat reading. Reading 1 Corinthians. Reading reading reading. Writing. Thinking. Praying.

I read 1 Corinthians 13 right into 14 and I only got two words in and I stopped.

Pursue love

And I sit and I realize that those two words only mean something when you've just read the whole chapter before it. Because how do you pursue love if you don't know what it is?

If you've just read 1 Corinthians 13, you'd know that by pursuing love, you're actually pursuing a whole host of things:

Patience
Kindness
The end of jealousy, arrogance, and rudeness
Humility
Sacrificing for others
Not being irritable or resentful
Truth-rejoicing
Bearing all
Believing all
Hoping all
Enduring all

I have to give props to my parents right now, because they are being the father in Luke 15 for my sister right now. They are doing this. They are showing us that we can mess up and that we will still have a place to come home to and they will be patient and kind and sacrificial and endure everything we throw at them.

On March 2nd, I christened a new journal. I wrote, "Lord, show me what love is", right under the verse for the season, "Many waters cannot quench love; neither can many floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised" (SOS 8:7).

If only I had known what that would mean, being shown what love is. Being shown what it is to be

Patient
Kind
Not jealous, arrogant or rude
Humble
Sacrificial
Free from irritability and resentment
Rejoicing in the truth
Bearing all
Believing all
Hoping all
Enduring all

Because when you pray for something like that, it's not just something that happens automatically. You're put to the test, you learn by experience, and in my case, it's been day after day of one of the hardest things I've ever done. Loving someone who makes my life difficult. Who has hurt me and the people I love. Who doesn't take responsibility for her choices and expects everything from everyone.

Ann Voskamp writes, "Don’t waste a minute of your life on anything less than eternity — and that’s. what. love is. Eternal, without end" And she continues, "it’s never too late to love and there is always time to love and what else is a lifetime for?" 

I think of Christy Nockels' song, "Choose" and am reminded that when I choose in this moment to love God, I must also love his people, his people who were made in his image and knit together by his hands. 

Because many waters cannot quench love.